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Great Purge
Main article: Great Purge
See also: Mass graves from Soviet mass executions, National operations of the NKVD, and Stalinist repressions in Mongolia
Mass graves dating from 1937–1938 opened up and hundreds of bodies exhumed for identification by family members[132]
Stalin's attempts to solidify his position as leader of the Soviet Union led to an escalation of detentions and executions, climaxing in 1937–1938 (a period sometimes referred to as the Yezhovshchina, or Yezhov era) and continuing until Stalin's death in 1953. Around 700,000 of these were executed by a gunshot to the back of the head.[133] Others perished from beatings and torture while in "investigative custody"[134] and in the Gulag due to starvation, disease, exposure and overwork.[bf]
Arrests were typically made citing counter-revolutionary laws, which included failure to report treasonous actions and in an amendment added in 1937 failing to fulfill one's appointed duties. In the cases investigated by the State Security Department of the NKVD from October 1936 to November 1938, at least 1,710,000 people were arrested and 724,000 people executed.[135] Modern historical studies estimate a total number of repression deaths during 1937–1938 as 950,000–1,200,000. These figures take into account the incompleteness of official archival data and include both execution deaths and Gulag deaths during that period.[bf] Former "kulaks" and their families made up the majority of victims, with 669,929 people arrested and 376,202 executed.[136]
The NKVD conducted a series of "national operations" which targeted some ethnic groups.[137] A total of 350,000 were arrested and 247,157 were executed.[138] Of these, the Polish operation which targeted the members of Polska Organizacja Wojskowa appears to have been the largest, with 140,000 arrests and 111,000 executions.[137] Although these operations might well constitute genocide as defined by the UN convention,[137] or "a mini-genocide" according to Simon Sebag Montefiore,[138] there is as yet no authoritative ruling on the legal characterization of these events.[103]
Citing church documents, Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev has estimated that over 100,000 priests, monks and nuns were executed during this time.[139][140] Regarding the persecution of clergy, Michael Ellman has stated that "the 1937–38 terror against the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church and of other religions (Binner & Junge 2004) might also qualify as genocide."[141]
In the summer and autumn of 1937, Stalin sent NKVD agents to the Mongolian People's Republic and engineered a Mongolian Great Terror[142] in which some 22,000[143] or 35,000[144] people were executed. Around 18,000 victims were Buddhist lamas.[143]
In Belarus, mass graves for several thousand civilians killed by the NKVD between 1937 and 1941 were discovered in 1988 at Kurapaty.[145]
Soviet killings during World War II
Main articles: Katyn Massacre, NKVD prisoner massacres, and Soviet war crimes
Following the Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939, NKVD task forces started removing "Soviet-hostile elements" from the conquered territories.[146] The NKVD systematically practiced torture which often resulted in death.[147][148] According to the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, 150,000 Polish citizens perished due to Soviet repression during the war.[149][150] The most notorious killings occurred in the spring of 1940, when the NKVD executed some 21,857 Polish POWs and intellectual leaders in what has become known as the Katyn massacre.[151][152][153] Executions were also carried out after the annexation of the Baltic states.[154] During the initial phases of Operation Barbarossa, the NKVD and attached units of the Red Army massacred prisoners and political opponents by the tens of thousands before fleeing from the advancing Axis forces.[155] Memorial complexes have been built at NKVD execution sites at Katyn and Mednoye in Russia, as well as a "third killing field" at Piatykhatky, Ukraine.